Hi friend,

the middle of a long crossing. The water is 19 degrees. My shoulder is screaming. And there are 29 kilometers still to go.

In that moment, I get to choose what I do with my own head. I have three options.

1. positive thinking. Tell myself the water is warm, the shoulder is fine, the distance is nothing. But the water stays 19 degrees. Lying to myself doesn't raise the temperature a single degree.
2. the spiral. "This is too far, I'm too cold, my shoulder is done." Also useless, and it makes me slower.
3. is the one I keep coming back to. I talked about it this week on Simon Hartley's Podium Club, and of everything the two of us covered, this was the idea that stuck most.

It's called neutral thinking. A performance coach, Trevor Moawad, put the name to it.

Neutral thinking starts by saying the facts out loud, exactly as they are, without dressing them up and without making them worse. The water is 19 degrees. My shoulder hurts. There are 29 kilometers left.

In the water, my answer is almost always the same. The next stroke. Not the 29 kilometers. The one stroke I'm about to take, and making it a good one.

That is the 5%, lived inside your own head. You can't change the facts, the cold, the pain, the distance. That is the 95%. But you can always choose where you point your attention next. That is the 5%.

Now take it out of the water.

The deal fell through. The quarter is down. The project is three weeks behind. Those are your 19 degrees. Telling your team "it's all fine" fools no one, and panicking fools no one either. Both just burn the energy you need.

Neutral thinking does the harder, calmer thing. It says: here is exactly where we stand. Now, what is the next stroke? The one call, the one fix, the one conversation you can actually make today.

This week's experiment: name the 19 degrees.

The next time something goes wrong, say the facts out loud, flat and honest, without talking them up or talking them down. Then ask the only question that moves anything: where do I point my focus now, and what is the one thing I can do next?

The water stays 19 degrees either way. The only thing you control is the next stroke.

See you in the water

Bernhard

P.S. Seeing a hard situation clearly, then finding the next stroke that actually moves it, is the work I do with people one to one. If you're staring down something right now and you want someone in your corner to help you find that next move, reply and tell me about it. That's how we start.

P.P.S. Simon and I went deep on all of this for an hour. If you want the full conversation, it's here: Podium Club.

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